I'm a casual board gamer, with a couple of groups I play with. We're always looking for a new game to try, but there are those of us whose eyes will glaze over by the third page of rules. So we stick to simple-to-intermediate strategy and cooperative games such as King of Tokyo, Settlers of Catan, etc. The most complicated games we can play and actually have fun would be Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica.

This is the official suggestion thread for board games my group should try out. If I end up buying a game you suggest and posting it on the main page, you'll get some Shmuckers and a shout out.

Smash-Up: Everybody sends their minions to try to take over various sites. There are a bunch of different themed minion decks -- each player's deck consists of two of them shuffled together so you have factions like Pirate/Zombies, Dinosaur/Ninjas, Alien/Wizards. Rules and mechanics are simple; the only somewhat fiddly bit is determining each side's strength when a bunch of bonuses get stacked up.

Cartagena: Everybody is trying to get their gang of pirates to the escape boat first. To get more of the cards you need to advance your pirates, you need to let some of them fall behind (one key tactic is to lose as little progress as possible while doing this).

_________________Is this a real holy war, or just a bunch of deluded boopholes croaking each other?

Dice, casinos, gambling, backstabbing and uhhh, dice. You build casinos, make money, expand casino empires, make more munneh. But there's enough interaction with other players to make it more fun than I make it sound.

For co-op play, Pandemic is a lot of fun. 4 players work together to search for a vaccine to a global pathogen that threatens the very fabric of humanity!

You each take roles as researcher, dispatcher, doctor, etc (the etc class is OP though, don't use it) and work together to stop the outbreak for good.

I can't vouch for it personally, but Mason Williams' And The Beat Goes On might be worth a try. On the plus side, it is very affordable, and has a relatively small rulebook. (20 pages and a character sheet)

Quarriors is a great game. It is a game built around a lot of dice. Every player starts with the same 12 dice and each turn you roll 6 dice. You buy new dice (monsters, spells, money, etc) and attack each others dice. Once you know how to play it takes 30-45 minutes to play and any game where you have a bag full of dice to play has to be a good one.

Bang! Dice which is a faster paced version of Bang! that most people are able to understand very easily and play again and again.

and

Sandwich, a game of trying to grab ingredients with which you need to make 3 sandwiches for the people sitting next to you. Depending on the order of preference of the sandwich each player got, the players who gave them said sandwiches gain points. It is hilarious to see people having to choose between camamber oyster & mustard sandwich, banana crickets & wasabi sandwich and broccoli nuts & natchos sandich and have to pick an order of preference.

b)The extraordinary adventures of Baron Munchausen, an amazing storytelling game where player is a nobleman/noblewoman in the times of Baron Munchausen and you challenge each other to recount facts of your life: "Pray tell me Archbishop Robert of Titania, is it true that you single-handedly conquered Constantinople using only a peeled grape that his imperial highness's the Sultan's daughter had peelled for you?"

Lords of Waterdeep is fun, and relatively quick pased after everyone has worked out how to play. It's a dnd themed resource management game where you lead a guild to get victory points by completing quests and building buildings. I've never actually looked at the rule book, but had the rule explained to me in around 5 minutes.

I will second prior comments of Seven Wonders, Lords of Waterdeep, Baron Munchausen, and Pandemic. These are all excellent games, not too intensive mechanically but loads and loads of fun. A caution: Baron Munchausen starts to drift into RPG territory (which is great and I love it to bits); it might not always gel with everyone at the table.

For my own recommendations, I will toss out:

1) Sentinels of the Multiverse. Completely cooperative superheroes game - players each select a premade superhero deck based on entirely new heroes*, then team up to fight a villain. The villain's deck is automated, so that it effectively plays itself, with nobody having to work against the table. Great fun, though it takes some trial and error to get familiar with how a given hero's deck is designed to work. Takes 3-5 players, but 4 players is really the sweet spot.

2) Shadow Hunters. Team-based game. Monsters and Hunters are trying to wipe each other out, while the Neutrals are bystanders caught in the crossfire with their own weird win conditions. Team affiliations are completely secret, so you have to figure out your allies and enemies through the course of play.

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